1. TEST REPORT IPTV Box
Slingbox
Links Your
Satellite Receiver
to the Internet
Imagine that your boss sends you away
on an overseas business trip for several
months – in a world that gets closer and
closer every day, this scenario is not
exactly unrealistic. Naturally, while you’re
away, you’d like to continue watching your
favorite TV channels from home. But it
won’t take long for the disappointment to
set in; even though our world is getting
smaller and smaller, this is not really true
Slingplayer
for TV reception.
The fact remains programming due to cost and space limi- these applications that anyone can easily
that because of tations. Only a few years ago, reception of install at home. The Slingbox takes care of
your geographi- your home TV channels in another part of encoding and compressing the input signal
cal position not the world was a problem that had no solu- from almost any source and placing it in
all satellites from tion. But thanks to ever faster Internet an audio/video stream that can be carried
around the world connections and ever higher bandwidths, a via a network or the Internet without any
can be received; new TV reception possibility has slowly but problems.
more precisely, surely established itself: IPTV.
a relatively small At first we were a little skeptical if such
range of about Many of you have probably already a system would even work, especially via
140° are above heard of the term IPTV; it has to do with a the Internet. Naturally, we were quite anx-
the horizon. technology whereby a TV channel in digi- ious to get started when the delivery truck
tal form from a service provider is deliv- showed up with the Slingbox package.
Add to this the ered to your home via the Internet and
Virtual fact that a signal routed to either your PC or to a specialized At first glance, the box did not appear
Remote Control
from a satellite is set-top-box for your TV. In this form, it all that spectacular; the front of the box
limited by its transmission footprint on becomes possible to watch not only reg- sported nothing more than two LEDs that
the ground. This simply means that even ular TV channels, but also feature films, showed its current status. The right LED
though you might be able to theoretically sporting events, etc., for a fee. indicated the box’s power status while the
receive a satellite, it could happen that left LED showed an active network con-
the signal is so weak where you are that And as long as we’re on the subject of nection.
it would take an extremely large antenna money, access to this form of TV is not
to get a workable signal (if at all). Most exactly cheap and is usually restricted to On the rear panel you will find in addi-
likely, you’d end up in a location that your Internet providers own network and tion to audio/video and S-video outputs,
makes it impossible to receive your home not, for example, in a hotel room while on also a VHF/UHF tuner connection (our test
satellites. vacation or if you’re away on a business box used “F” connectors) as well as a port
trip. for an external IR receiver and naturally
Cable system operators and digital ter- the network interface RJ45 jack. Power is
restrial distribution also wouldn’t work Sling Media began developing their own supplied via the included adapter; the box
since they can typically only deal with local IPTV system several years ago exactly for is happy with 6V.
The Slingbox converts any TV signal into an IPTV stream
24 TELE-satellite & Broadband — 08-09/2007 — www.TELE-satellite.com

2. are, there is one problem that even you
cannot solve: only one signal can be con-
nected at any one time.
The Sling Media designers didn’t want to
accept that so easily so they came up with
a rather clever solution to this problem:
Slingbox connections
the included IR transmitter. It is simply
placed in front of the reception diode of
Overall, the workmanship of the Sling- care of, the Slingbox then asks you to con- the desired A/V box and then connected
box left us with a very positive impres- figure all the different input sources. This to the SlingBox.
sion. All necessary connector cables as includes activating the A/V and S-Video
well as a detailed user manual and CD with inputs that don’t require any additional A virtual remote control can be dis-
the required software are included in the configuration as well as controlling and played via the Sling Box software and
package. starting a scan with the help of the inte- includes almost all of the same functions
grated tuner. Once everything is correctly of the real remote control. If, for exam-
Everyday Use set up, the first attempt at streaming can ple, you decide to push the P+ button to
begin. switch channels, the Slingplayer takes that
The connection and initial turn on of the command and routes it to the SlingBox via
Slingbox is self-explanatory. All you need We used a standard digital satellite the network which then sends it to the IR
is a free network connection on your router receiver with the Slingbox and connected transmitter on the particular A/V box. The
and a connection to an A/V box. Before everything to our relatively large internal remote control codes from a large variety
actually using the box over the Internet, network. The Slingplayer was started on of entertainment electronic equipment
the manufacturer suggests first perform- one of our office PCs and just one mouse- were already preprogrammed so we had
ing a thorough test using your internal net- click later we were able to see the A/V no trouble operating our satellite receiver
work; we thought this was a good idea. signal from the satellite receiver, and all in from a distance.
exceptional video quality.
Contrary to other streaming services, The Slingbox needs about five seconds
Sling Media developed their own Sling- The datarate between the box and to convert and encode the input signal. As
player for playback of their streams. This Slingplayer was variable and was directly a result, the actual A/V signal reaches the
is actually necessary in order to take full related to how much movement there was Slingplayer with only a minor delay.
advantage of all the functions of the box. in the video: the more movement in the
It also provides an extra measure of secu- video, the higher the datarate. The pic- Even though these five seconds, when
rity. ture quality can be manually controlled by compared to professional equipment that
the user to match the actual capabilities of doesn’t really operate that much faster,
After installing the software, the player the network or Internet connection. is actually quite good, it is unfortunately
immediately recognizes all the Slingboxes a little too slow to operate the units from
connected on the local network. Yes, it In our tests we were able to measure afar. For this reason Sling Media imple-
is possible to operate multiple boxes inde- datarates of roughly 300 kbps for video mented a so-called Control Mode that
A/V Configuration Channel Scan Slingplayer Network Settings
pendently from each other. To prevent with hardly any motion and 1700 kbps for reduces the video processing to an abso-
unauthorized access to the Slingbox, the video with extensive motion. lute minimum.
next step involves setting up an admin-
istrator and user password. If a friend When used with a local network, these This makes it not as much fun watch-
wants to access your box via the Internet, transmission rates were not a problem, ing a normal TV but the box does typically
you simply need to give him the user pass- that is, we were unable to detect any video handle the stream in less than a second
word to limit his access to A/V streams. breakup or any other type of interference and thus makes it much easier to use from
The administrator password would provide during our tests. afar since the attached receiver reacts
access to all of the boxes settings via the Just a few mouse clicks is all that is almost simultaneously with receiving the
Internet. needed to switch between the different IR command.
signal inputs (tuner, A/V input or S-Video
Once these settings have been taken input). As practical as these three inputs After such a successful test with our
www.TELE-satellite.com — 08-09/2007 — TELE-satellite & Broadband 25

3. local office network, we naturally wanted assistance of our colleague in the USA who distribute it to dozens of their employees
to see how well signals were transmitted was once again happy to report on the PC’s. Just think of all that cabling that
via the Internet. For this task we asked excellent picture quality he was enjoying would no longer be needed!
our TELE-satellite colleague in the USA – but at a price. The DSL connection could
to install the Slingplayer on his PC. Back not be used for any other simultaneous The box can be used just as easily to
here all we had to do was to configure the activity. A typical DSL connection does watch TV from any place around the world;
Slingbox with just a couple of mouseclicks not offer the same upload speed as it does you can even control the receiver on the
to accept signals from outside of our net- download speed. It must also be taken other side of the world via the Internet!
work and we also had to identify what port into account that a fully loaded upload will The bandwidth available through a typi-
on our router the Slingbox would use so also put the brakes on download speed. cal DSL connection would even be enough
that our fun would not be interrupted by although simultaneous surfing of the Inter-
a firewall. At the moment the developers are net would only be recommended if you
diligently working on new features and truly have the proper Internet connection.
In only just a few minutes we got the improvements for the Slingbox; as soon as
good news! Our colleague in the USA was new software becomes available, it can be
watching German TV in exceptionally good downloaded into the box via the Internet.
quality and from what we could see on our A recent update included the ability to
satellite receiver, he was actually having transfer Slingbox A/V content directly to
quite a bit of fun surfing through all the a UMTS compatible mobile phone. Unfor-
different German channels. This all took tunately, this service does not function as
place from across the Atlantic Ocean via yet all over the world and is currently lim-
the Internet and also with the help of the ited to Great Britain.
attached IR transmitter on the receiver.
It is only just a matter of time before
Since our office has an always-on high- mobile telephone service providers around
speed Internet connection, we also wanted the world make this feature available to
to hook up the Slingbox to a DSL connec- everyone.
tion to see if it was possible to deliver
Conclusion
decent audio and video through this type
of broadband connection.
Overall the Slingbox functioned very
We disconnected the box from our office well and can be used almost anywhere.
setup and brought it to the home of one A company or an office, for example, can
of our employees. We again needed the take the signal from a security camera and
26 TELE-satellite & Broadband — 08-09/2007 — www.TELE-satellite.com